Page 14 of In Death's Hands
“You almost got killed. Twice. In less than twenty-four hours. How can you be fine?” Standing rooted in place, he looks so good in the dark, so tall and imposing, that it should be forbidden. And he’s worried about me. Clearly. Openly. It does strange things to my heart.
“I’m fine because I’m telling you I am. You don’t get to suddenly appear in my life and judge how I’m handling things!”
“I’m not j—”
“You are! Everyone always is! ‘That’s not healthy, Liv.’” I scowl. “‘You’re in shock, Liv,’ ‘You should talk about it, Liv,’ ‘What you believe you saw was just your subconscious creating anarrative you could deal with.’” I’m breathing hard now, choking on bitterness.
The shock on his face would be comical if I could find a spark of joy in me at this moment. But all I hear are the dozens of voices from friends, therapists and people who thought they knew better. “How about you just let me deal with things the way I’m comfortable with, okay? Trust me, I’m used to close calls by now. This is nothing new.”
He blinks a few times. “What do you mean you’re used to it?” There’s a hard edge to his voice that is somehow thrilling in its threat.
Damn it. I’m clearly not as fine as I pretend to be if words are spilling out of my mouth without signed approval from my brain. “Nothing. I mean nothing.” The fight leaves me as quickly as it built, broken pieces afire all that’s left behind. “I’m just tired,” I add quietly, looking at the wooden log on the fire and relating to it too much for my own comfort.
Nathan appears next to me. Too close yet not close enough. I can see in his eyes that he’s far from done questioning me, but my well-being seems to take precedence.
That’s nice.
He gently puts his big hand on my arm, always watching me, observing my reactions, and guides me to the plush grey couch. For once, I decide not to fight it. It’s nice being taken care of. I look at him openly while he grabs a blanket and places it on me. As he sits next to me, he touches the coffee table, and it suddenly opens up to reveal a crystal decanter full of a deep amber liquid. Whisky, or maybe rum. He takes two glasses out and pours a healthy dose into each before handing one to me.
Without a word, he sits back and sips from his own glass, looking at the fire like it has secrets to reveal and only he can decipher its burning language.
I swish the liquid a few times in the heavy glass, enjoying the reflection of the flames in the amber. As I keep tasting and enjoying the deep burn of the rum down my throat, I start to relax. My breaths are deeper, my muscles looser. The quiet is warm and cosy rather than overwhelming and awkward.
I should have known better than to trust it.
Once my glass is empty, Nathan takes it and deposits it back on the table next to his own. “Are you ready to talk?”
I close my eyes and consider my options. His questions are fair, and after everything he’s done for me, I can’t help feeling indebted. I owe him answers. But another part of me is aware that this is exactly what I’ve been avoiding for as long as I can remember. Can I trust him? I don’t know anything about him. Though I’ve been looking at him for months from afar, I only talked to him for the first time yesterday. It makes zero sense that my whole body is pushing for me to open up, to confide in him. What inspired this trust that I seem to have no control over?
And so, despite years of keeping my mouth shut, of pushing away people that wanted a peek behind the bubbly, happy curtain I’ve perfected, I decide to trust my instinct.
“I died when I was four.”
The silence is deafening. Gone is the peaceful quiet. Skin-crawling awareness and tension have replaced it.
I guess claiming you died long ago will do that to a room. In my defence, I’m only speaking the truth. One I stopped telling a while back, so I may be a bit out of practice.
Nathan doesn’t say anything, only observing me with those intense eyes of his. Does he think I’m crazy? Is he regretting opening his home to me?
There is no turning back, however. It’s not like I can play it off as a joke and move on, so I ignore my nerves and power through. “Something happened to me then.” Something I will not be mentioning anytime soon. I may be willing to open up, but this is a limit I will not cross. “I… survived.” Or rather was brought back to life, but don’t go saying that out loud unless you want to spend years talking to over-educated people about delusions and coping mechanisms.
“You survived… dying?” he asks with a strange expression on his face.
“Uhm…” I guess I’m not the best at explaining what happened in a rational way. “Yes. What matters is: I’m not dead. Clearly.” He frowns, but I move on, hoping he won’t point out the obvious holes in my story. “What’s actually relevant is that I’ve been close to dying many times since. I haven’t figured out if that’s because I’m just unlucky or because I killed kittens or ate babies in a past life or something. That’s just what it is, and I’ll never get an answer.”
“How much is ‘many times’?”
“Many times.” His eyes impossibly darken, the flames from the crackling fireplace reflecting in them. He stays quiet and waits for me to actually answer his question. “I don’t know for sure, okay?”
“Give an estimate.” The command makes my skin crawl, but when he looks at me, inflexible and infinitely patient, I deflate.
“About twenty—”
“Twenty?!”
“—maybe thirty times.”
He looks positively outraged. The air around us seems to pause. Goose bumps rise along my arms at the sudden drop in temperature. I frown at the fire that is still going strong and wonder if my exhaustion is playing tricks on me. Nathan stands up and starts pacing in front of me, blocking the light from the fire with each of his laps. When he stops and looks at me again, my breath stays blocked in my throat. “You mean to tell me that since that accident, you’ve almost died thirty times?”
